


i'm just a ghost out of his grave

by quadrille



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, During Canon, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mental Health Issues, Pre-Canon, Vignette, What-If, Yuletide, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-05
Updated: 2016-12-05
Packaged: 2018-09-06 10:23:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8746822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quadrille/pseuds/quadrille
Summary: His dad’s a producer, but Joshua wants to be a director. (A character study, past and present, with a focus on his relationship with his sisters & Sam. Extreme spoilers for the game.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Selkit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selkit/gifts).



> Viewing with creator's style is recommended; the profanity is all Josh's; title from Mother Mother's [Ghosting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlAiq0_BXac), for all your Canadian indie rock needs. I got really obsessed with this game this fall, so I was super excited to see this prompt that hit on all my own buttons as well, and so decided to fill it. This is kinda weird and disjointed and epistolary, but hopefully you enjoy! ♥

“It takes no imagination to live within your means.”  
– Francis Ford Coppola

  


* * *

  


His dad’s a producer, but Joshua wants to be a director.

In any group of friends, he’s always the planner, the strategist. When it comes to long road trips, he rides shotgun and scrutinises Google Maps while Chris drives, both of them amped up on caffeine and Red Bull. He buys the bus tickets to Whistler. He arranges the Airbnb when he and the twins go on vacation together (an independent indulgence their parents allow as long as Josh is there to chaperone, because that’s his job, isn’t it? he’s supposed to look after these girls because Bob Washington never will). When he’s home on break, he harangues the group to buy their release night tickets to The Avengers, because if it’s left to anyone else, they’ll forget until the last damned minute and the movie will be sold out.

And he does it because that’s his job.

And yet—

For all his mocking of Chris’ eons-long crush on Ashley (the one that is, swear to fucking christ, _never going anywhere_ unless Josh himself does something to shove the kids into each others’ arms), somehow he just can’t ask Sammy out. He’d been planning an elaborate date, trying to find the exact perfect combination of circumstances that will lead to her having the best night ever and being totally won over, effortlessly wooed. But then his plans morph and it gets way too elaborate. (Whale-watching off the coast of Victoria? Is it too much to ask a girl on an entire weekend trip for the first date? Yeah, it’s _too fucking much_ , you asshole.)

Then he starts worrying about how Beth and Hannah will receive it: he keeps staging long monologues, rehearsing ways to politely explain to his little sisters that, pretty please, he’d really like to bang their best friend, but it’s not like that, swear, because she really does matter to him—

In the end, Josh just invites Chris to watch old Westerns when he knows she’ll be over to hang with Hannah, and hopes that Sam will wander through the kitchen again while on a hunt for popcorn and maybe she’ll join their movie night and maybe, just maybe, he can stop being such a jackass and remember how to flirt in a way that she’ll take seriously instead of just another stupid joke.

Samantha Giddings  
**January 6, 2014** 9:14 PM SAM has sent an image!  
  
**JOSH:** excuse me. where the fuck did you find a hedgehog??  
  
**SAM:** Disney princess powers :)  
  
  
**January 12, 2014** 10:06 AM **JOSH:** hey  
  
**SAM:** Hey!  
  
**JOSH:** you going on the cabin trip? ;)  
  
**SAM:** Um duh  
  
SAM has sent an image!  
  
**SAM:** I am READY  
  
**SAM:** Plus Hannah would probably murder me if I didn’t go  
  
**JOSH:** and our friendship means nothing? jeez sammy, i’m crushed  
  
**SAM:** Sure  
  
**SAM:** I mean, you obviously need SOMEONE to supervise you :p  
  
**JOSH:** yup  
  
**JOSH:** that’s the basis of our dynamic lol  
  
**SAM:** Dude, you know Chris won’t hold your hair back when you inevitably puke. I, on the other hand, am caring and empathetic enough that I just might bother  
  
**JOSH:** hey i learned a lot in freshman year  
  
**JOSH:** i am a wise college sophomore now, more than capable of holding my drink  
  
**JOSH:** especially compared to the likes of cochise  
  
**SAM:** You say this as if I haven’t already heard all the stories from Hannah…  
  


* * *

  


Josh has a pounding headache. He’s convinced it’s the worst hangover of his goddamn life, and he’s not wrong: it’s going to be the one that makes him stop drinking for a full month, up until he drinks far, far too much and Melinda has to call 911 to have his stomach pumped. 

But for now, it’s just a hangover. And it’s throbbing in time with his pulse as he walks through the forest, a pale and watery dawn filtering through the skeletal trees.

“Hannah! Beth!” Josh’s voice cracks like the dried twigs underfoot. He can’t feel his hands. The wintry chill has sunk into his bones. (He will never feel warm again; something in Blackwood has grasped a hold of his heart with icy fingers and it isn’t letting go anytime soon.)

“Han!” He thinks he can hear their friends’ voices echoing through the trees. Mostly Sam’s, raw with exhaustion and worry. Emily gave up long ago, heading inside for hot cocoa and to warm up.

(But the girls are out here, somewhere. If he’s cold, then they’re freezing and hypothermia’s probably set in and _fuck_ , he’s going to come across his baby sisters’ frozen corpses in a ditch somewhere, isn’t he? Isn’t he?)

Mike and Jess are still out searching, though. He didn’t expect that from them.

“Beth!”

The teenagers keep searching and searching, even as the sun rises and the world gets brighter and brighter, reflecting off the snow until their eyes water. Normally it’d be one of those bright beautiful white mornings that Josh loves, but he feels numb. He walks until his thighs are burning with the cold, stinging through his jeans, his boots sodden through, his headache and dry mouth and frigid lungs and frozen hands, and they cannot find his sisters.

And in the end, they all take the cable car back alone, and the long quiet bus ride alone, and his hand shakes as he dials the police.

  


* * *

  


It isn’t until their interview with the police and the park rangers that someone finally explains why the girls ran off into the damn woods, and when Josh hears the truth, he punches his fist into the wall and breaks a finger. The Washingtons call a doctor to splint his hand, and then they call Doctor Hill.

  


* * *

  


He keeps trying to piece together the events of that night, lining up the details with the timeline that the others provided. And he just cannot reconcile the _before_ with that nightmarish _after._

They’d been having a good time. It was a normal night. A promising start to a great weekend away. He remembers making plans to go skiing the next day; making Mike and Matt drag in fresh logs to build the fireplace; Jess plugging her phone into the speaker system and starting to dance across the room; and then Chris started getting nervous about Ashley and so Josh suggested drinks because what else was he but a good wingman, and then…

Then everything slides into a haze, a solid wall of grey as impenetrable as anesthesia.

Apparently Beth tried to wake him up, right at the end—that’s what they tell him, at least—but Josh can’t figure out if he genuinely remembers her calling his name through a blackout stupor, or if he’s making up those memories.

Just to have one last piece of his sisters to hang onto.

  


* * *

  


His mother finds him unconscious a month later. Of course it’s his mother who finds him—Bob Washington is busy, off in Vancouver on another months-long shoot. He doesn’t even come home when they officially mark his son as a suicide risk; he just signs the bills. 

“How does it make you feel?” the doctor asks, his kindly elderly face examining the patient over the edge of his clipboard. Josh stares at the gnarled hands on the pen, the bobbing and weaving nib, the scrawls of ink. Do all doctors have such shitty handwriting?

“How does _what_ make me feel?” He knows his tone is snotty, barbed and pointed, but he can’t help it.

The doctor doesn’t seem to mind or care or even notice. It’s like water rolling off a duck’s back.

“The night of their disappearance. The circumstances of it. And your personal circumstances.”

Josh digs his fingernails into his palms, but they’re too blunt to draw blood. It’s not his fault.

“I don’t drink anymore,” he finally says after a long pause, and his voice sounds so light, almost breezy, detached. “Because I keep thinking, what if I hadn’t been blacked out that night, what if Chris and I weren’t totally knocked out. What if I’d been awake to protect them, to look after them, maybe they’d be alive today. Is that the sort of breakthrough you’re looking for, doc?”

(But it’s not his fault. It’s not his fault. He knows exactly whose fucking fault it is and he knows what he needs to do about it.)

“Is there anything else on your mind, Josh?”

“I don’t think the meds are working anymore.”

“What makes you say that?”

He doesn’t want to admit it. But he’s been in this game for a long time and he knows how it works: honesty is the best policy. “They’re just having less of an effect,” Josh mumbles. “I’m having to take more of ‘em to work. I’ve been over-using, I guess.”

 _That_ finally draws the psychiatrist’s attention, and he leans forward with a sharp inhale of breath. Dr. Hill’s voice is acerbic, critical. “Josh. You know you’re not supposed to adjust your medication without consulting me first. If it’s not having the desired effect anymore, you should have told me immediately so I could work with you to amend your dosage.”

“Yeah, man, I know.” Josh shrugs. Hands lying limp in his lap. He can’t feel his fingers. Is the heat even working in this office?

The pen is scribbling furiously across the clipboard now. _Bingo._ “If you really do feel that the Amitriptyline is no longer having an effect, then we can try something else. Everyone’s chemistry is different, Josh, and it’s just a matter of finding the right type and dosage that’ll work for you. I’m thinking we’ll try you on the Phenelzine for a while, see how you adjust to that.”

 _Adjust,_ Josh thinks, and barely holds back the bleak laugh that wants to bubble up out of his throat like poison. How the hell do you _adjust?_

  


* * *

  


He starts hatching the plan over the summer, drafting sketches and diagrams and roaming the Washington house like a ghost. (And really, that’s what he feels like: part of him was left on that mountain and has never come home.)

  


* * *

  


“Hey, Josh. How are you holding up?” 

They’ve run into each other in an Edmonton coffee shop. There are dark hollows under his eyes and he’s more jittery than usual, but that’s pretty much par for the course these days. Sam hasn’t really seen him in a while, but from what she’s gathered, all his nervous energy has been poured into his podcast. She’s still stubbornly knuckling down at her studies at UofA, but he dropped out shortly after the incident.

She can’t blame him.

“I’m, uh. Yeah, I’m alright, I guess.” She always figured she could tell when he was lying, so this statement gives her pause. The girl takes in this new, harried version of her friend, and her hand darts out to rest on his arm in the lightest of touches. He skitters backward as if he’s been burned. “How are you?” he volleys back instantly, and Sam winces.

“Can we just…” Her voice falters. “Look, can we just not do it this way? I don’t want to do small talk, Josh. You don’t have to pretend to be okay around me. Because I am so not freaking okay, either.”

There’s a brittle look in his eyes. He’s like a trapped animal, wanting to escape. (This is not playing out the way he intended.)

“You’ve got my phone number,” Sam continues, pressing. “If you ever want to talk about things, I’m just a call or a text away. Seriously. Even if it’s three o’clock in the morning, just reach out. You can trust me. I know what you’re going through.”

And he takes her up on it, and it seems better, for a while. He starts texting her again because she’s the only one who gets it. They talk after midnight, long rambling conversations that start off about the twins but then roam across every conceivable subject, including her latest midterm and his favourite band, until his voice turns into a tired rasp and _Don’t you have class in the morning, Sammy?_ and she reluctantly hangs up. She even falls asleep on him once, and swear to god, it’s the cutest fucking thing.

But that hollow behind his heart still feels cold, and empty.

  


* * *

  


He goes about it meticulously, with long to-do lists and supplies needed. He contacts a design firm in Toronto to lay out the fake newspaper, and then has it printed in Edmonton. He researches industrial machinery and takes some carpentry lessons (and mom is even happy at that, talking over the dinner table about how great it is that he’s found a hobby, and he wants to fucking laugh until he chokes because _ma, you don’t even know_ ). 

And also, where the hell do you go to buy abattoir supplies?

  


* * *

  


“How does it make you feel?”

He’s getting really tired of that question. “How do you _think_ it makes me feel, doctor Hill?”

  


* * *

  


He thought he’d have to explain why he was visiting Blackwood so often—constantly drifting back to the scene of the crime, like probing an open wound. But it turns out that Bob and Melinda are so busily working through their own grief, pouring themselves into their work, that they hardly notice their son’s absences.

As long as he makes his appointments with Dr. Hill (and there’s one day that almost goes awry when the bus blows a flat tire past Calgary), they seem to assume Josh is okay.

“Renovations,” he says to the truck driver at the gate, grinning and signing the Washington name with a flourish on the bill of lading. He stands stamping his feet in the autumnal chill as the deliverymen unload the circular saws, the loops of cable and wiring, the stacks of two-by-fours.

  


* * *

  


When he’s watching her in the hot tub, there’s a small sick part of him that’s thrilled and aching. (He could just remove his mask. Go back outside, knock on the door, ask her again about joining her, this time in earnest. Not kick off this entire nightmare.)

But it’s a rolling snowball set in motion a year ago, by everyone else, everyone his sisters thought were their friends, and it’s time for them to get a taste of their own medicine.

They need to feel fear. Terror. Humiliation. Even her.

When the door closes, the gust of air blows the candle out.

  


* * *

  


Sam’s hands are white-knuckled on the towel, staring helplessly at the white glow of the movie screen as she feels the floor drop out beneath her.

“How does it make you feel?”

Josh’s voice doesn’t sound like his voice. It’s a hollow monstrous noise filtered through the modulator built into his mask, and he watches intently to see how Sam reacts.

Practical SFX, man, that’s where it’s at: it’s why the original Star Wars trilogy is better with puppets than CGI, and it’s why Aliens is still so piss-your-pants scary. As the digital video plays out in the Washingtons’ home theatre, you can _see_ the guts pouring right out of Josh as the version of him on-screen dies, and he’s so unutterably proud of his handiwork. His craft. His art.

And when he hears that wrenching scream out of Sam’s throat, he knows he’s had the right effect. He’d wondered how much she cared. Now he knows, sort of.

 _You’d be proud of me, pop,_ he thinks. _I’m the best damn director on this mountain._

She’s the only one he apologises to when he sinks that needle into her neck. It isn’t exactly how he planned to embrace her someday—but hey, some things don’t go as planned, do they?

Just ask Hannah and Beth.

* * *

  


When he rips off his mask, for a fleeting moment with a stutter-jump of his heart, he feels exactly like a Scooby Doo villain and the absurdity of the situation hits him. _And I woulda gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids._

When his shitty friends gasp his name, Josh can’t stop laughing. “Every one of you got my name! And after all you've been through! Good. Good, good, good.” He’s on a loop. He can’t stop. “I mean, how does that feel?”

They’re untying each other in numb horror ( _good_ ) and he feels giddy, loose, unfettered. This is the reveal. This is the moment it’s all been building up to, his masterpiece, his coup de fucking grâce. 

“Right?” he asks now, demanding and repeating. And the anger bubbling up when they don’t answer: “How does it feel? Do you enjoy feeling terrorised? Humiliated? I mean, panicked?”

The lights are starting to dawn in their eyes. Finally, those idiot pigs get it.

“All those emotions that my sisters got to feel once one year ago! Only guess what? _They_ didn’t get to laugh it off! No! Nope! They’re gone!”

Mike’s voice is quiet, dangerous. “I don't know if you noticed this, Josh, but none of us are laughing.”

And Josh almost wants to throttle that stupid jock, because that’s the whole freaking point. It sure as hell wasn’t funny a year ago, either.

  


* * *

  


“The opposite of anger is not calmness, it’s empathy.”  
– Mehmet Oz

In another time and another place, they never go to that fucking cabin in February 2014. Melinda reports that the generator’s busted and the kids can’t take their trip until the following year.

(Which is enough time to wean Hannah off her crush: by the time they do go, she’s already dating another college freshman, and spends most of the first night texting him instead of paying attention to the former quarterback. Fresh drama erupts between Jess and Emily instead. Boom, butterfly effect.)

Josh invites Chris over to watch old Westerns, and they affect dumb John Wayne drawls that Beth can’t stop laughing over. He invites his little sisters to a Halloween party with his college friends. Hannah is still moping around about Mike, but he and Beth figured she might perk up if they fling her at some cute hipsters from Josh’s university film society, and surprise surprise, it actually works.

And he finds Sammy in the corner of the party. She’s dressed like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, and he’s wearing a Jason Voorhees mask and a dingy jumpsuit a size too large for him (not exactly the most flattering look, but whatever). 

“Knew it,” she laughs, lifting up his mask to reveal Josh’s fever-bright eyes, that smirk curling at the corner of his mouth. “Only you would be such a nerd about classic horror.”

He waves his red solo cup at her, like a grandiose impresario gesturing to their surroundings, asking her to admire his handiwork. “Do you like the party?”

“Depends. Am I gonna have to hold your hair back later?”

“Who, me?” He’s all innocence.

“I forgot. You’re all wise now, a big bad junior and everything.”

“Ah, jeez, has it really been that long?”

Over her pigtailed shoulder, he can see a girl from the film society eyeing him, shooting him a silent invitation that means exactly what he thinks it means, but Josh’s attention instantly snaps back to Sammy. His heart is starting to throb in his skull, fluttering with adrenaline—and he hates that she does this to him, that they can joke and flirt but for some reason he just can’t take that last step. Because whatever he does, it has to be perfect. It has to be _perfect._

Her hands wrap over his and gently lift the cup away, stealing a sip. He watches her do it: the flash of teeth, her lipstick smudged on the plastic, her blue-painted nails. They match her dress.

“Look, Sammy…” His voice is dry despite all the beer he’s been drinking.

But now depositing the cup on a nearby endtable and standing on tiptoe, Sam suddenly grabs a fistful of his jumpsuit and drags him closer, crashing into a kiss. She tastes of tequila. She and Hannah did tequila shots earlier.

He’s off-balance, windmilling and almost falling in order to lean down and reach her—why is she so _short_ —but Sam is unexpectedly fierce, her lips hard on his, mouth open and hungry, and they stumble backwards and collide with the wall. There’s music pounding around them and partygoers sliding past on their trips to the kitchen, but his entire existence has narrowed to this moment instead. His hands find her neck, trace the line of her jaw, his body pressed against hers, and when they eventually break apart for air, Josh tries to think of what to say, but she simply laughs and says, “Finally.”

  


* * *

  


“So sorry,” he says and plunges the needle into her neck.

But that hollow behind his heart still feels cold, and empty.

  



End file.
